CoLyricist: Enhancing Lyric Writing with AI through Workflow-Aligned Support

TL;DR

CoLyricist, an AI-assisted lyric writing tool designed to support the typical workflows of experienced lyricists and enhance their creative efficiency, addresses needs by incorporating tailored AI-driven support for each stage, optimizing the lyric writing process to be more seamless and efficient.

Abstract

We propose CoLyricist, an AI-assisted lyric writing tool designed to support the typical workflows of experienced lyricists and enhance their creative efficiency. While lyricists have unique processes, many follow common stages. Tools that fail to accommodate these stages challenge integration into creative practices. Existing research and tools lack sufficient understanding of these songwriting stages and their associated challenges, resulting in ineffective designs. Through a formative study involving semi-structured interviews with 10 experienced lyricists, we identified four key stages: Theme Setting, Ideation, Drafting Lyrics, and Melody Fitting. CoLyricist addresses these needs by incorporating tailored AI-driven support for each stage, optimizing the lyric writing process to be more seamless and efficient. To examine whether this workflow-aligned design also benefits those without prior experience, we conducted a user study with 16 participants, including both experienced and novice lyricists. Results showed that CoLyricist enhances the songwriting experience across skill levels. Novice users especially appreciated the Melody-Fitting feature, while experienced users valued the Ideation support.

Figures (10)

• Figure 1: High-level typical lyric writing workflow, comprising four primary stages: Theme Setting, Ideation, Lyrics Drafting, and Melody Fitting. Gray boxes represent stage outputs, while blue boxes denote actions.
• Figure 2: The first-half workflow: Step 0 (uploading melody information), Step 1 (setting the theme), and Step 2 (ideation).
• Figure 3: The rest half of the workflow: Step 3 (creating the draft lyric) and Step 4 (melody fitting)
• Figure 4: Questionnaire overall evaluation results comparing experienced and novice users' responses to CoLyricist. The evaluation contains 8 criteria: helpfulness, reuse intent, writing speed impact, satisfaction with output quality, creativity stimulation, ease of use, enjoyment, and sense of ownership. Responses are categorized on a 5-point Likert scale from "Strongly Disagree" to "Strongly Agree". Both user groups generally responded positively, with high agreement on the tool's helpfulness, potential for reuse, and ability to speed up lyric writing.
• Figure 5: Questionnaire result for each feature. The chart displays ratings for six key functions of an AI-assisted lyric writing tool: Brainstorming, Rhyming Dictionary, Generate All Draft, Generate Single Draft, Auto Melody Fitting, and Singing Voice Synthesis. Responses from experienced and novice users are categorized on a 5-point Likert scale from "Strongly Disagree" to "Strongly Agree," with an additional option for "I did not use this function." The data suggests that most features were perceived as helpful, with variations between experienced and novice users in their utilization and appreciation of specific functions.